Journal
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Volume 24, Issue 1, Pages 72-79Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/0956797612450302
Keywords
decision making; emotion; judgment; myopic misery; sadness; intertemporal choice; present bias
Categories
Funding
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie
- Divn Of Social and Economic Sciences [0820441] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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We hypothesized a phenomenon that we term myopic misery. According to our hypothesis, sadness increases impatience and creates a myopic focus on obtaining money immediately instead of later. This focus, in turn, increases intertemporal discount rates and thereby produces substantial financial costs. In three experiments, we randomly assigned participants to sad- and neutral-state conditions, and then offered intertemporal choices. Disgust served as a comparison condition in Experiments 1 and 2. Sadness significantly increased impatience: Relative to median neutral-state participants, median sad-state participants accepted 13% to 34% less money immediately to avoid waiting 3 months for payment. In Experiment 2, impatient thoughts mediated the effects. Experiment 3 revealed that sadness made people more present biased (i.e., wanting something immediately), but not globally more impatient. Disgusted participants were not more impatient than neutral participants, and that lack of difference implies that the same financial effects do not arise from all negative emotions. These results show that myopic misery is a robust and potentially harmful phenomenon.
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